Priest praised for campaign against 'gay panic' defence

Geoff has been working in regional news since 2010 when he started at the Chinchilla News. He since worked at Ipswich's Queensland Times and the central reporting team NewsRegional. He focuses on data journalim, politics and crime.

FATHER Paul Kelly's long campaign to end the "gay panic" murder defence has been successful.

The Queensland Parliament on Tuesday night voted to remove "unwanted sexual advances" as a partial defence against a murder charge.

Before the change, a person accused of murder could claim they killed a person as a result of an "unwanted sexual advance". If a jury accepted this defence the accused would be found guilty of manslaughter rather than murder and avoid murder's mandatory life sentence.

Fr Kelly, a former Maryborough Catholic priest, led the campaign for the law to be changed after he found Wayne Robert Ruks's body in the St Mary's Catholic Church yard in 2008. Parliament heard the men who killed him used the "gay panic" defence and were convicted of manslaughter.